The Everglades: River of GrassBefore 1947, when Marjory Stoneman Douglas named The Everglades a "river of grass," most people considered the area worthless. She brought the world's attention to the need to preserve The Everglades. In the Afterword, Michael Grunwald tells us what has happened to them since then. Grunwald points out that in 1947 the government was in the midst of establishing the Everglades National Park and turning loose the Army Corps of Engineers to control floods--both of which seemed like saviors for the Glades. But neither turned out to be the answer. Working from the research he did for his book, The Swamp, Grunwald offers an account of what went wrong and the many attempts to fix it, beginning with Save Our Everglades, which Douglas declared was "not nearly enough." Grunwald then lays out the intricacies (and inanities) of the more recent and ongoing CERP, the hugely expensive Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. |
Contents
The Nature of the Everglades | 5 |
The People of the Glades | 57 |
The Discoverers | 80 |
The Adventurers | 107 |
Captives and Martyrs | 128 |
The Conquerors | 145 |
Three Hundred Quiet Years | 168 |
The Free People | 185 |
The Coming of Peace | 246 |
White Mans Return | 268 |
Drainage and the Frontier | 295 |
Boom Blow Bust and Recovery | 327 |
The Eleventh Hour | 349 |
Afterword by Michael Grunwald | 391 |
Bibliography | 426 |
Index | 434 |
Common terms and phrases
acres adelantado alligators American Bahamas began Big Cypress birds Biscayne Bay boats Bowlegs brown called Caloosahatchee Calusas camp canals canoes Cape Sable Captain Carlos cattle chief Chokoloskee Coacoochee Colonel Creek crowded Dade County dark deer drainage east coast Everglades eyes Father Cancer fires fish Fort Brooke Fort Myers Glades gold Governor green Grove Gulf hammocks Havana houses hundred Indian Key islands Jesup John Juan Ortiz Key Biscayne Key West killed Kissimmee Lake Okeechobee land lived Luis Cancer mangrove Marjory Mayaimi Menendez Miami River Mikasukis miles mounds moved muck Myers Negro night palmetto park pine plants Ponce de Leon railroad rain river of grass rock sailed salt sand saw grass Seminole sent ships slaves soil south Florida Spain Spaniards Spanish sugar swamp Tamiami Trail Tampa Tekesta thousand trees tribes tropical wind women young